'DEAR ORSON WELLES & OTHER ESSAYS' BY MARK COUSINS

 

It was very unexpected to receive an elegant card headlined FOR FAVOUR OF REVIEW from The Irish Pages Press who say they are delighted to enclose a review copy of their most recent book for your consideration entitled 'Dear Orson Welles & Other Essays' by Mark Cousins. I have had ever since the pleasant task of reading this 448-page beautifully-bound volume consisting of some 40 Essays in many different forms, most of which were written during flights and long vehicle journeys in many countries and situations connected with the world of film over a long period.

To understand the new book better some background is useful. Mark Cousins has made 24-feature films, 30 short films and 40 hours of television. He has travelled the world widely particularly for his marvellous tv series 'The Story of Film: An Odyssey' which I have watched many times on DVD. Have just brought the 550pp fully-illustrated book  that provides a deeper view of the full global study of the history of film-making 

The new book is a delightful work composed of four sections. Screen Memoirs contains10 essays which begins  with Los Angeles. He spent chunks of his 30s doing a tv show in which he  interviewed movie actors and directors liked Gus van Sant, Jack Lemmon who had a drink problem and  Rod Steiger who suffered with depression. Dennis Hopper who had developed bone cancer told him how to make martini . I like the piece on Robert Towne who wrote Bonny and Clyde, Chinatown and wrote  the famous scene between Brando and Pacino in The Godfather.

 The other sections are Dear Directors with 6 essays, Thoughts on Form, with 10 Essays and the World of Cinema with13 Essays. 
He says he not great at words and, in an essay called 'Visual Thinking' he says he runs videos in his head,

Mark Cousins was born in 1965. In Children and Trauma, the title of a talk he gave at a psychology conference in 2007, he writes:

' I was brought up in Belfast and was five when the war in Northern Ireland went into top gear.  I was a nervy little boy anyway, but the war jangled those nerves...The war took its toll on the loving world my parents had built for us. Our house was damaged by a bomb, a family friend was murdered.

Yet I had medicine for the fear, a balm to soothe it. That medicine was ... imagery.

He writes that there were no books in the house and he was never taken to art galleries 'yet from the age of eight or so, I'd go to the local library, hunker down on the floor and flick through books of Escher prints, Paul Klee drawings and, in particular, Paul Cézanne's Mont Sainte Victoire. These pictures eased my nervous system.'

He writes that he is not  interested in the escapist aspects of movies like Harry Potter  so much as films like Kes and Billy Elliot which depict grieving, or damaged or unfilled children in the process of becoming whole.  By mid-teens he became a film buff and then, when he grew up as a filmmaker.

In later years he went on to consider about the idea of kids themselves producing imagery. Fourteen years ago he co-founded a charity called Scottish Kids Are Making Movies but felt that there was too much technique in making simple films. Instead he got interested in Through the Eyes of a Child, a photo camp run  by an international NGO to give kids in refugee camps the opportunity to use cameras for a few days which has proved to be very successful in building their confidence.

 This is all one aspect of a very wide-ranging book full of ideas and information. He is a champion of female film makers and film making in Africa and many other countries. The remarkable range and depth of his knowledge provides anyone who has a passion for film-making with exciting new thoughts and ideas. He brings to life his remarkable and prolific career, shaped at it is by the philosophers, writers, actors and films that have influenced him. A great read.